A conventional system generates an initial plan at the beginning of a mission as a single long chain of steps. Each of the steps may be primitive items to be executed with no additional calculation. When changes in an environment or situation, which require a change of some steps in the initial plan, occur, the conventional system will be required to re-determine the entire plan from that point onward.
Replanning may require a relatively long period of time. In a time critical environment, replanning will ideally be performed quickly, before catastrophic situations may occur. Frequent, time-consuming replanning may bog down a planning and control system, leaving critical decisions to already overloaded human commanders.
Another conventional system may include conventional real-time tasking and classical shop scheduling. Conventional real-time task scheduling may be generally static and/or periodic and unable to request asynchronic and dynamic changes in requirements and resources. Conventional shop scheduling with deadlines may include stochastic and deterministic models. Conventional shop scheduling also requires time frames that may be minutes or hours. These conventional techniques are usually too computationally intensive for on-line resource management where a time frame is irregular, immediate, and spontaneous.